


You and Me and the Empty Space Between

by Sandrine Shaw (Sandrine)



Category: Torchwood
Genre: 5 Times, Comfort Sex, F/M, Implied Jack/Ianto, Post Season 2, implied Gwen/Jack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-16
Updated: 2012-02-16
Packaged: 2017-10-31 06:48:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,493
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/341150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sandrine/pseuds/Sandrine%20Shaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Finding comfort in unexpected places. [Five times Gwen and Ianto kissed.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	You and Me and the Empty Space Between

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for _Doctor Who_ 's "The Last of the Time Lords" as well as "Adrift" and "Exit Wounds"

I.

In the end, their first kiss technically doesn't even happen. 

They follow the creature halfway across the world, but it always seems to be one step ahead of them. Days turn into weeks and weeks turn into months, and every time someone says, "I wish Jack was here," there is a fight and the silence that follows grows colder than the temperature.

It's usually Ianto who says it, and it's usually Gwen who starts yelling. Sometimes it's Owen, but Owen is so short-tempered these days that it doesn't really make a difference if he's fighting with Ianto and the others or not. 

The angry words fade like an echo hurling back from the mountain tops, though, and when the words have died away and the anger has drained, all that's left is Gwen feeling cold and lonely.

She makes coffee at the campfire and offers Ianto a cup in silent apology. He takes it just as quietly, not protesting when she sits down beside him, both of them staring into the distance where the mountains reach into sky.

"Something is going on," Ianto says finally, frowning a little. 

It's vague and it sounds like superstition, but she knows he's right. She feels it too, the shift in the air, the faint smell of ashes, the toneless sound of bad things to come. 

"We should go home," she says and puts her head on his shoulder. 

He frees his arm from under the blanket and puts it around her, drawing her closer. He smells clean and warm and a little like Jack's aftershave, and Gwen thinks that she could stay like this forever.

When she feels the press of Ianto's lips against her forehead, she lifts her head and looks at him. His expression is unreadable and his lips are cold, but they warm up quickly when she kisses him. It's unexpected, and yet not, and he seems as little surprised as she is that something seems to have grown between them out of the loneliness and the need for warmth. When they break apart, she rests her forehead against his and their shared breath mists the air between them. 

They never make it home. They die, clinging to each other. And then it's erase, rewind, a year that never happened, and neither of them remembers the horrors and the destruction and the death, just as they don't remember the kiss.

 

II.

Every day that Jack is gone changes them. Owen gets a little angrier, and Tosh grows a little quieter, and Ianto looks a little more broken. Gwen wonders if she's the only one to notice. Tosh and Owen, they never say anything – but then, neither does she. They just carry on, as if nothing has happened, as if the team is complete, as if there isn’t this large, Jack-shaped hole right between them. 

But it's right there for everyone to see, and even though they've all stepped up to do the job, sometimes the mere resolve to be, as good as they once were is not enough. Sometimes, they're not quick enough, not experienced enough, not ruthless enough. 

They always win, but sometimes people die, and afterwards, the "This wouldn't have happened if Jack was here" is written clearly all over their faces, even if no one mentions it.

Without Jack, it's quieter in the hub, like it's a wake or maybe just the calm before the storm. Or perhaps it's the calm after the storm, Gwen isn't sure anymore. They do their work and they go home, and then it's the same again the next day and the day after, just going through the motions. It's like they're only existing in the empty space Jack left behind.

Gwen kisses Ianto because she's sad and lonely and because she misses Jack. She knows it's the wrong thing to do, but somehow, she _needs_ to do this, just to see if she can still feel anything, if anything still moves her.

It instantly feels wrong and what she does feel is guilt and desperation and a sadness so overwhelming that it chokes her. Afterwards, she cannot look Ianto in the eye.

"We shouldn't—" Ianto begins, but stops halfway through the sentence, looking down to the floor and clearing his throat. "Jack will be back."

"Right. Right, of course," she agrees quickly, even though she doesn't really think so. Jack left without bothering to tell them where he went, he just turned his back on them, and it's been weeks since she gave up looking around every few minutes to see if he had magically reappeared out of thin air behind her. 

"I should be going," she says. She needs it to sound as if it weren't a big thing. It should only be fair that Ianto doesn't really want her – because it's not Ianto she really wants either, but that doesn't mean that the rejection doesn't still hurt. 

Ianto nods. "I'll see you tomorrow."

There's an underlying uncertainty in his tone that almost makes it a question and Gwen thinks what he's asking, really, is whether they're okay. She forces a smile onto her face.

"Sure."

That night, Rhys takes her out to a fancy restaurant and proposes. She says yes and tells herself that the tears she's crying are happy tears.

 

III.

Sometimes, she dreams. 

She dreams of snow and bone-crunching coldness, of harsh, barren landscape and mountains rising high in the sky as far as she can see. She dreams of watching the sky burn, the last night of the world, and cool lips on hers.

The dream comes back to haunt her time and time again – not every night, but once in a while,. When she has almost forgotten it, whenever she least expects it, that’s when it comes back. 

As dreams are, it's vague and incoherent, just flashes of loosely connected scenes, washed out images she can barely recall when she wakes in the morning. But she intuitively knows that it's the end of the world she's seeing, just as she knows that it's Ianto she's kissing in the dream.

And it's this that unsettles her the most: not the apocalyptic nature of the dream, or the fact that she's never seen a landscape like that before in her life and yet it still strikes her as oddly familiar, but that it's Ianto. 

It should be Jack. Well, really, it should probably be Rhys, the man she married and promised to love and to cherish until death do them part. But she's not that good at denial to make herself believe that it's Rhys she'd want at her side if the world was ending. It should be Jack in her dream. 

But it's not. It's Ianto; it's always Ianto, and even though everything else fades quickly after she wakes until the dream is nothing but a faint echo, she can taste the phantom kiss on her lips for hours afterwards.

 

IV.

She doesn't realize now much she's relying on Rhys' support until he takes it away. 

Maybe it wouldn't hit her quite so hard if it weren't happening at the same time she feels her trust in Jack wavering. Jack is keeping things from her, has probably kept things from her for a long time. People are disappearing, and the only reason she can think he could have to stop her from digging into this is that he's somehow involved. Part of her doesn't want to know, but the rest – the part of her that's still a police officer and the part of her that aches to see a mother suffer – needs to find out.

And right now, when she needs Rhys to be there for her more than ever, he shuts her out, both metaphorically and literally. She wants to be angry at him, but all her anger is already focused on Jack and there's none left, only weariness that reaches to the bone.

Gwen looks at the couch and throws the bedding on it, and then she turns and leaves. The door falls into the lock behind her with a bang, a faint echo of her frustration and Rhys' anger.

She gets into the car and starts driving, no clear destination in mind. But somehow, when she winds up at Ianto's doorstep, it doesn't surprise her in the least.

He looks the same as ever when he opens the door, awake and fully dressed, and she wonders if he ever sleeps.

"Hi." She smiles an uncertain smile, suddenly overcome by awkward self-consciousness. "Can I stay here tonight? I mean, if it's not a bother." 

Her mind flashes back to the afternoon, the forbidden glimpse of Ianto she caught when she opened the door to Jack's office. The faint hint of a blush rises on her cheeks.

Ianto seems unruffled, though, stepping aside to let her into the flat. 

"Of course. Come in." He doesn't demand an explanation and if he's curious at all, it doesn't show.

They watch some silly TV show on his couch, a bowl of crisps in front of her and a cup of warm tea in her hands. Her head somehow ends up on his shoulder, and it's warm and comfortable and cosy. For the first time in days, she feels safe, her eyes falling shut on their own volition.

"You should get some sleep," his voice says, right against her ear. 

Maybe it's his breath brushing against her skin, maybe it's the warm curl of the familiar Welsh vowels, or maybe just the proximity, but she feels a pleasant shiver running down her spine and suddenly, she's wide awake again.

He leans over to take the cup out of her hands and place it on the table. 

"I don't have a guest room, but you can have the bed. I'll just take the couch."

When he makes a move to stand up, she grabs his arm and stops him. 

"You don't have to," she says, and their eyes meet.

He hesitates, but doesn't pretend to misunderstand. His gaze flickers down to her lips for a split second, and she knows that he remembers their kiss, months ago, when Jack was missing.

"We shouldn't." His voice is carefully neutral, guarded.

"Why? Because of Rhys? Because of Jack? Fuck them."

"You're angry—"

"I'm angry alright!"

She's sick of being lied to and ordered around and coddled. She's sick of living her life on Jack's terms, or Rhys'. She's sick of trying to do both and accomplishing neither, held at arm's length by Jack and smothered by Rhys. She loves them both, but more and more often, she finds herself realizing that she doesn't really _like_ either of them that much.

And yet, she's not here to get back at them. She's here because Ianto is different. He doesn't expect or demand anything from her. She remembers, months ago, after Lisa, how fragile he looked, how broken, as if he'd fall apart if she touched him. He didn't, though. He became her rock and her ally; it was him who kept her from breaking apart. 

She wants to tell him that. She wants to explain, but can’t find the words, so she kisses him instead. He seems to understand anyway, because this time, there's no protest. His lips are cool and sure, just gentle enough to put her at ease and just rough enough to stir the arousal in the pit of her stomach. This time, it feels right.

She smiles when they break apart. "Will you respect me in the morning?" she says, trying to hide the seriousness of the question by a small twitch of her lips.

"Always," he replies, and she knows that he means it.

 

V.

When the world is ending, it's nothing like in her dream. But then, after all, it's not _the_ world that's crumbling, it's only _her_ world. 

Every time she walks down the stairs in the hub, she sees the bloodstains on the tiles, even days and weeks after Ianto has washed the last of Tosh's blood away. She keeps saying things like "When Owen does the autopsy…" or "Tosh can look into this later" before she catches herself and remembers that they're gone. She knows it's supposed to get easier in time, but it doesn't and she's beginning to be afraid that it never will. 

Jack keeps touching her: a guiding touch on the small of her back, his hand squeezing hers, a brush of fingers against her arm – as if she could absorb his strength through osmosis. Rhys tells her to take a break which, she supposes, is a subtle way of asking her to leave Torchwood. She knows he's only concerned for her, but she cannot help but resent him a little for thinking she cannot take it.

Even if she really can't.

She messes up and someone gets hurt, nothing that cannot be mended, but it could have been worse if Jack hadn't been there. He looks at her with so much sadness and worry that she wants to scream, and he asks Ianto to drive her home. 

Arguing with Jack won't get her anywhere, but later in the car, alone with Ianto, she says, "I don't want to go home." 

Her voice is toneless and unsteady and she keeps her eyes fixed front, convinced that if she looks at Ianto, he'll see how close she is to crumbling. As if he doesn't know anyway.

There's a terrifyingly long moment when he doesn't say anything and she thinks he's probably considering calling Jack and telling him that she's unfit for duty, or asking her to get help.

When he speaks, though, what he says is, "Back to my place, then?"

There's no condescending edge in the tone, no pity. It's just a calm suggestion, as if it is the most normal thing in the world. As if he isn't under orders to remove her from a crime scene, as if Rhys isn't waiting for her at home with his worries and his stifling comfort that has so far failed to reach her, as if it isn't about guilt and obligation and pity. As if they are just a man and woman in the car, destination anywhere.

Later, curled into his embrace, something grates at the border of her consciousness. 

"I used to have this dream," she tells him. "About the end of the world. It felt so real. Everyone around us was dying and you were holding me. You were always holding me." 

She takes an unsteady breath. "They're gone now, the dreams. But I wish I could have them back. Ever since— Now all I see when I close my eyes is Tosh bleeding out on the floor and I'm scared to fall asleep."

Ianto doesn't reply, but his arms tighten around her, as if he can protect her from the memories, keep them at bay by holding her a little closer. And maybe… maybe he can. Just for tonight.

End.


End file.
